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The following story originally appeared in EXTRA News, a bi-lingual community newspaper in Chicago, IL, on Sept 10, 2015.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel at the town hall meeting at Wilbur Wright College on Sept. 3rd.
Photo by Dominic Gwinn

Residents, activists and teachers shouted and booed as Mayor Rahm Emanuel held his final of three budget meetings this past Thursday, Sept. 3, at Wright College on the Northwest Side under heavy security.

“We’re outraged; we feel robbed. We feel left out,” commented Rousemary Vega, a Humboldt Park resident and CPS parent who angrily chastised the mayor earlier in the evening. “The mayor’s saying ‘tough decisions,’ and the tough decisions are just him saying he can’t cut from [his] people, the North siders; so [he] takes from the areas that are already suffering from violence and poverty.”

The mayor’s proposed budget would see homes valued at $250,000 pay an extra $500 per year, as well as $7.17 tax on smokeless tobacco products, and $1 tax on popular ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft.

Currently, the city of Chicago is facing a $500-million budget gap, leaving many weary that the city may not be able to pay its bills or pension obligations to police, fire and rescue workers. The city’s financial woes are only growing as Chicago Public School is to balance its own separate $6.4-billion budget.

“This will be, obviously, difficult. And I don’t underestimate the difficulty. That’s why it’s going to be done in the most fair and progressive manner,” said Emanuel.

While only a few speakers spoke of Dyett High School protesters, which dominated the first two meetings, special education teacher Sarah Chambers shot back at the mayor after it was earlier announced that Dyett would reopen as an art school. “What that tells me is that the black students of Chicago can shuck and jive for the city of Chicago, but they can’t create green technology innovation.”

“Usually the mayor does not listen, so I think we need to keep going at him and pressuring him. He especially doesn’t listen to people who are at schools on the South and West sides. We’re in an all Latino school. Basically, they ignore us,” said Chambers, who talked to EXTRA after making her public comments. However, during the interview, members of the Chicago Police Department asked her to stop speaking. “We cannot hurt our schools, and our students with disabilities. We have special education for a reason and we need to fund it.”

“He wants to put on this show for the city,” said Vega, “but I just believe that this was another fake. Rahm doing a ballet [dance] around his responsibilities…The one thing I wish people would take away is that we need to stick together. We are the city of big shoulders, and I need them to understand Rahm’s shoulders are not big enough for the job.”

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The following story originally appeared in EXTRA News, a bi-lingual community newspaper in Chicago, IL, on Jul 30, 2015.

Chicago teachers are holding their breath once again as the cuts to the education budget begin to trickle out of City Hall, leaving many educators struggling to adjust before the new school year.

The rally came on the same morning as Fitch Ratings, a credit-rating agency, lowered Chicago Board of Education’s rating to BBB, more commonly referred to as “junk” status.

“These cuts are unjust; our children have paid enough,” stated 35th Ward Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa at the rally. “We’ve gone through 50 school closures,. We’ve seen thousands of teachers laid off. We’ve seen cuts to sports and after-school activities; we’ve seen cuts to music and the arts, and now we’re being told that our children and their families are going to have to suffer through more cuts.”

Hector Gonzalez, a bilingual teacher at Kelvyn Park High School, has been teaching at the school for 10 years, but now he’s worried about what could happen next. “We used to look forward to a raise, and now we don’t even have that. Now, who knows if some of us will even have our jobs? I used to say every year, right before my students would leave at the end of the year, ‘I’ll see you next year.’ I honestly was afraid to say that this year because I’m afraid I might not be there.”

Amongst the shake-ups that are causing the ire of many teachers and parents are cuts to handicap student programs, the shifting of school start times and the closing of bus stops for selective student programs. Schools have also been forced to cancel after-school activities, as well as reconsider supplies while enrollments continue to decline in public schools throughout the city.

“We’re going to have to tell kids, ‘I’m sorry; I know you want to stick around and do all these extra things, but we just don’t have them this year,’” commented Gonzalez when asked about after-school programs. “We just can’t afford to pay people for coming into our building to help our kids.”

“We always make it work, somehow,” remarked Jackie Charles, a fourth grade teacher at Darwin Elementary. “I would rather spend my own money on my students than have them not have what we need at the time, and I think that’s how most teachers operate. Schools get by year after year, and we do the best that we can, but I think people are starting to say the best that we can is not good enough.”